The new economic governance of the Eurozone – a rule of law analysis

Reforms such as the Treaty on Stability, Coordination and Governance (TSCG), the Six-Pack, or the Two-Pack have brought about a new regime of economic governance in the Eurozone and have dramatically changed the ways economic, fiscal and social policies are being conducted in the currency union.

These changes, which constitute the object of this doctoral research, beg many questions of a constitutional nature, as to the power relationships between the European Union (EU) and the Member States in the Eurozone, the institutional equilibria at the supranational level, the ability of law to constrain political and economic power, or the place of the individual in the integration project.

The main ambition of this research has been to determine if, and to what extent, the new economic governance of the Eurozone adheres to the founding constitutional guarantees of the EU legal order, namely those drawn from the rule of law principle. In so doing, it has answered the following research question: in its post-crisis version, does the economic and budgetary governance framework of the Eurozone live up to the EU’s constitutional commitment to the rule of law? In order to do so, this doctoral thesis has proceeded in a three-step process.